How to optimize your search engine marketing efforts to combat seasonality.

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Sean Skyllingstad | Liftopia Inc. | 3/13/18
Handling SEM
Seasonality Like a Pro

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What is Liftopia?

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 Majority of you use automated bid management systems
 Seasonality can cause drastic changes in historical data patterns
 Since automated bidding relies on patterns in data, outside
factors that shock the system can hurt automated solutions
How Does Seasonality Affect SEM?

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SEM Seasonality at Liftopia Inc.
Christmas/NewYears
MLKWeekend
Presidents Day
Spring Break
Macro
Summer WinterFall Spring

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Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Micro
SEM Seasonality at Liftopia Inc.
President’s
Day Weekend

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 Our seasonality is more extreme than most accounts
 Since we cannot use most automated solutions, we’ve learned
best practices for optimizing manually
 These practices can be utilized to combat seasonality across any
industry
SEM Seasonality at Liftopia Inc.

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 Seasonality applies to almost all accounts!
 Black Friday shopping in November
 Back-to-school shopping in August
 Spring break planning in March and February
 Summer vacations in July and August
 I’m sure you can think of more…
How Does This Apply to My Account?

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 Knowing when your seasonality occurs is important, but
knowing how it occurs is also crucial
 Utilize historically data combined with timing indicators to
understand seasonal events
 This will allow you to maximize revenue/reduce spend
strategically
Learn How Your Seasonality Occurs

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Three Day/Holiday Weekends
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday$
$
President’s
Day Weekend

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 Identify “Money Terms” and increase bids manually
 High ROAS/low impression share keywords
 Device bid modifiers
How to Maximize Revenue

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Utilize Your Bottom Funnel Keywords
 For seasonality that is dependent on
outside factors, utilize your bottom
funnel keywords to asses viability of
increasing spend
 Brand keywords, keywords very
specific to your product, etc.
 Exact and phrase match keywords
Ski resort
Ski tickets
Discount lift
tickets
Liftopia

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Liftopia Yearly SEM Revenue Trend
Summer WinterFall Spring
Hype Season Wind Down Period

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Ramp Up/Wind Down Strategy
 Depending on weather, resorts can open early or late
 As weather begins looking favorable/bottom funnel keywords hit
their ROAS targets, we increase bids on higher funnel terms
 As bottom funnel keywords lose traffic at the end of the season,
we decrease bids and pause campaigns completely

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Plan for Flexibility in Your Budgets
 When seasonality doesn’t occur at the same time each year, you
need to be flexible
 If it snows a ton in January, but not at all in February, our spend
and revenue are going to be drastically different
 Ensures you can spend during surges, and pull back during light
periods

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Plan for Flexibility in Your Budgets
 We have daily budgets we
use for planning
 We increase spend if we’re
beating ROAS targets
during a low budget period
 Decrease spend if we’re
down during a high period

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Share these #SMXInsights on your social channels!
#SMXInsights
 Learn not just when, but how your
seasonality occurs
– Allows you to maximize
revenue/reduce spend strategically

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Share these #SMXInsights on your social channels!
#SMXInsights
 Utilize bottom funnel keywords as
a measuring stick for spend
– Brand keywords
– Keywords specific to product
– Exact/phrase match keywords

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Share these #SMXInsights on your social channels!
#SMXInsights
 Plan for flexibility in your budgets!
– Have a budget plan that allows for
extra spend during surges
– Don’t force things when traffic is light

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